Hyperconverged Infrastructure Has Emerged as a Catalyst for Data Centre Modernisation

In this data decade, organisations are looking to get the most out of their data, developing technological breakthroughs that, one way or another, everyone will experience and benefit from. The more effectively an organisation can harness the power of this data, the better – to ensure it can adapt to fast-changing markets and customer dynamics.

To enable this, organisations must simplify and automate their IT infrastructure while consolidating systems and services into holistic solutions that will allow more control and clarity. We cannot enable the digital leaders of the future by using the technology approaches of the past; IT needs to evolve to provide a foundation that accelerates digital innovation.

Hyperconverged infrastructure is proving to be an excellent fit for today’s datacenter

challenges

Hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) has emerged as a solution to the slow deployment and complex management of IT in the traditional economy. According to Fortune Insight, the global HCI market is projected to grow to $32.19 billion by 2028 at a CAGR of 24.9%. This striking growth rate is happening because a large and growing number of companies are deploying HCI solutions to run a mix of workloads, including those that are deemed mission-critical.

HCI was initially aimed at fast deployment, simplified management and improved IT responsiveness. However, it has since advanced to meet digital transformation needs, delivering efficient modern industrial Internet applications while enabling staff empowerment, global collaboration and clustering across industries. HCI has evolved and upgraded from the “old three layers” (compute, networking and storage) to the “new three layers” (cross-architecture, hybrid multi-cloud and application innovation). The new hyperconverged platform integrates the three layers of traditional IT architecture and provides prior configuration and optimisation according to user requirements. As a result, this enables rapid deployment of IT and simplified IT operations and maintenance management procedures and costs.

As organisations arm their on-premises clouds to support and optimise IT infrastructures for multiple cloud types, they are looking for solutions that provide optimal performance, flexibility and, ultimately, management consolidations and simplification - all of which HCI offers. We expect to see more organisations turning to HCI as operational hubs for multi-cloud approaches, prompted by the need to ensure that data and workloads are stored and managed in environments to suit the changing needs of the business.

Additionally, the rapid implementation of 5G, the Internet of Things (IoT), and Artificial Intelligence (AI) is spurring data growth at an incredible rate and changing the data game in terms of speed and accessibility. This growth, however, comes at a cost, as it is expensive and cumbersome to bring the entirety of this data on-premises. Organisations should instead adopt a “hub and spoke approach,” where they take in data at edge locations, glean insights and take only those insights back to the core hub to act on them.

The modern HCI systems available today represent a new phase of data centre convergence that fundamentally differs from these early iterations and drives unique business value benefits. Broadly speaking, hyperconverged infrastructure deployments can help drive lower capital costs, increased operational efficiency, reduced risk, and lowered data centre facilities costs.

As more businesses look to modernise their infrastructure, generate IT efficiencies and reduce IT costs, it’s no surprise that HCI continues to gain traction. What was once a solution targeted at remote offices and branch locations is now being deployed across core, cloud and edge because of its simplified operating model and ability to address almost any workload. The simplicity, scalability, and agility of HCI continue to be a catalyst for data centre modernisation and helping businesses transform their IT operations.